


fondu au noir

by kitseybarbours



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Assisted Suicide, Emotional Manipulation, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mild Gore, Murder, Prisoner of War, as in assisted by Ren, nothing ambiguous about THIS ending kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 04:21:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7299376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitseybarbours/pseuds/kitseybarbours
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux interrupts him. “I want you to help me, Ren.”</p><p>
Ren’s lips part in confusion. “Help you how?"</p>
<p>
“Sit down.”</p>
<p>
Ren obliges, wincing at the hardness of the metal slab. Hux sits down next to him and looks him in the eye.</p>
<p>
“I don’t want to die on their terms,” he states plainly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fondu au noir

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [Fondu Au Noir](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8013298) by [kitseybarbours](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitseybarbours/pseuds/kitseybarbours), [Silivrenelya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silivrenelya/pseuds/Silivrenelya)



> Title from [Fondu au noir](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMqLr0hhSwM) by Coeur de pirate. As per the usual, the characters, excepting minor/background ones, aren't mine.
> 
> I've been calling this fic "the Nuremberg trials...in space" since even before I started writing it, so that's possibly a better summary than the one above. The tags are there for a reason; please use your discretion!
> 
> Thank you as always to my perpetual first readers, [Redcap64](url) and [birdling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdling/pseuds/birdling), and to my matchless betas, [betts](http://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts) and [bygoneboy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bygoneboy/pseuds/bygoneboy)! I love you all terribly and am so very grateful for your critical reading and support. ❤︎

*

They send for him late in the evening.

His is the very last of the trials, he knows. It’s either an insult or an honour, he can’t decide which. They fed him twice today, and he thinks the food was warmer than usual; a last kindness, maybe, for the man they all know is doomed. (Kindness, or pity. He chooses the former — he can’t abide pity.)

But he knows as well as the rest that the trial is a formality, the verdict a foregone conclusion. The Resistance would never be so foolish as to let General Hux walk free.

The door to his cell slides open.

Hux looks up at once — a reflex left over from the early days, an instant response: would it be a droid with food (a once-a-day occurrence, at random hours, in the beginning), or would it be a hard-faced officer in Resistance getup, come to take him to be interrogated? Two choices only, upon which he’s built the foundations of his new life as a prisoner. Fight or flight. Fear or food. Choices that are not choices at all, for choice is a freedom afforded only to free men; and the ex-general has not been one of those for a long time.

“You’re to come with me.”

The Resistance officer is young, his blond hair slicked harshly back from his soft features. He hovers on the threshold and frowns when Hux doesn’t move from where he sits on the metal slab of his “bed”.

“You’re to come with _me,”_ the young man repeats, the slight crack in his voice proving that no, Hux has not lost his former menace entirely. Even here — pounds thinner, in shapeless grey prisoner’s clothing, with his hair grown past his ears and his beard several days unshaven (razor privileges are, surprisingly, allotted, although never often, and always under close supervision) — Hux still makes this man tremble. It’s immensely gratifying.

“Go with you where?” Hux asks with calm insolence, fixing the officer with a penetrating stare. _I sound like Ren,_ he thinks wryly: _or I suppose I mean “Ben Solo,” now._

The officer swallows. “Your trial begins in an hour,” he raps out, turning his eyes away.

Hux shrugs languidly. “You’re early. I’ve plenty of time.” He makes a show of yawning, stretching out as if to lie down and sleep. “Why not let a man have his last few moments of peace?”

The young man frowns. “You don’t understand,” he says sharply, and Hux can hear the _sir_ he bites back. “You’re to come with me to the medbay. They want to — clean you up before the trial.”

 _Ah._ So there it is. The noble Resistance, saviours of the galaxy, need to keep up their image. Their _star prisoner_ can’t look too… _imprisoned_ as he goes to meet his fate. The beard will have to go, Hux imagines —  _good riddance —_ and of course the hair as well. _I’ll look like myself again —_ but for how much longer, exactly?

“I suppose they’ll finally take care of _these,_ then?” Hux asks, lifting his wrists to show the young officer the deep, ugly red marks around them: imprints of manacles which were tightened and tightened and tightened, along with a metal band around his forehead _(that_ scar is currently hidden by the extra growth of hair), in an effort to make him confess all his crimes.  The wounds have never been properly treated and so have remained open, raw to the touch and still bloody after —  _what?_ Two months now? Three? Four? Lacking the rigid structure of a ship’s calendar — shifts and sleep cycles, officers’ meetings and off-duty days — Hux is at a loss.

“Yes.” The officer seems transfixed by the wounds on his wrists, his eyes fixing on them and staying just a moment too long. Hux can practically see the internal monologue: _did_ we _do that to him? Us, the Resistance?_ _The good, honourable, virtuous Resistance?_ “They’ll — patch those up before the trial.” He swallows again, harder now, and looks away. “You’re to have new clothes as well.”

“With long sleeves, I’d imagine,” Hux says cuttingly.

But the officer’s patience — or, more likely, that of his superiors — seems to have run out. The only response to his comment is a clenching of the officer’s jaw as he checks the time on his wrist comlink and then says, again, “Come with me. Now.”

*

The base’s medbay is brightly lit, done up in sterile whites and gleaming steel. Heads turn here, as they did in the hallways, when they see the notorious ex-general being marched to a medical droid: his legs are weak from lack of use, and he stumbles, knowing he must look a sight. Hux grits his teeth and keeps his chin up, refusing to let himself hang his head in shame and give them something to feel sorry for.

He’s stripped efficiently of his dirty, bloody clothing behind a privacy screen. They let him use the refresher; he luxuriates for a moment in the shower, which uses water, not sonics. The heat seems to penetrate all the way to his aching bones; but despite the instincts of his every cell willing him to stay, years of military training win out, and he gets out after five minutes precisely. A white medical gown lies folded, waiting for him: it hangs loose on his thin shoulders and makes him feel like a child.

He’s made to sit quietly on a hard bed as the medical droid bustles round him and applies bacta to the deep wounds on his wrists (he feels relief at once and closes his eyes.) The more superficial injuries have ointment applied to them and are bandaged — nicks on his face and jawline (he’s out of practice shaving), and small puncture wounds from the injections of several rather _persuasive_ concoctions.

(He thinks he’d recognised the effects of Shilian nerve venom, a particularly potent agent of coercion, which had been responsible for many of the useful confessions made to his own interrogators by captured Resistance members aboard Starkiller. He rather commends them for their bravery, now: while some of _them_ had lasted, say, ten or fifteen minutes before starting to scream, he remembers with some shame that he’d begun after about three.)

Once the bacta has done its work his wrists look nearly whole again. The skin is still an unnerving shade of red and the wounds are still smarting, but they don’t gape anymore, and when he touches them gingerly he doesn’t spring back in pain. The med-droid bandages them up as well, and then beeps in a very final manner which seems to signify that its work is done.

“Thank you,” Hux tells it, thinking it prudent to be courteous, even to a hunk of metal which is overwhelmingly unlikely to understand him. “I feel much better.”

(The med-droid gives a beep which might mean _You’re welcome —_ or, more likely,  _I should have let you suffer, First Order scum —_ and then locomotes swiftly away as if it can’t stand to be near him any longer. _You aren’t the only one.)_

Next comes the cosmetic retouching: the Resistance making-over their poster prisoner so he’s fit for the public eye. They give him a new uniform, genuine First Order. It doesn’t quite fit, due to the weight he’s lost in prison, but it feels like it would have, before; Hux wonders, slightly unnerved by the thought, if it’s one of his own, or else just a very good imitation. He fits the red armband around his left arm and looks at himself in the mirror for a moment, a feeling of bleak recognition descending, and then they call for him. “Out.”

They shave his beard for him; his hair is washed for the first time in weeks and cut to its previous, regulation length. Hux feels a slowly mounting nervousness as he watches the sheaves of hair tumble to the ground, like a chrono counting down his last moments of (relative) freedom. He swallows, made truly anxious for the first time today.

For the first time, too, he wonders if Ren will be there.

(He can’t bring himself to think of him as _Ben,_ even after all this time.)

Ren: his ex-rival, his ex-lover. Ben, though — Ben has been his torturer. Dressed in his plain Resistance garb, his wild hair tamed at last; Ben in the interrogation room, called in when after a few weeks of increasingly _hands-on_ questioning even the nerve venom had lost its effect. (Hux is nothing if not resilient.)

Ben not looking Hux in the eyes. Ben asking the questions he’d been directed to ask, questions Hux had heard and not answered a thousand times before, in a self-conscious mumble —  _Do you admit responsibility for the destruction of the Hosnian and Ileenium systems? (Yes,_ Hux thought, and said nothing.) _Do you feel remorse for your actions?_ (Yes. Now, he does. But then, defiant, spiteful, not speaking: _No.)_

Ben raising his hand when Hux remained silent; Ben reluctant but still acting, reaching out with the Force to wrap tendrils round his throat. Ben tightening his grip and finally looking Hux in the eye as he gasped for breath and arched helpless against his restraints, the manacles chafing on his bloody wrists. Hux crying out _“Ren!”_ with the last of his strength: Ben abruptly releasing his grip and Hux’s head thumping back to hit the torture chair. Spots behind his eyes, deep ragged painful breaths; and Ben, Ben Solo — not Kylo Ren anymore, although from here Hux could hardly tell the difference — leaving the interrogation room, and the door slamming shut behind him.

(Hux would later learn that he’s the only one they made Ren torture. He still doesn’t know whether to feel thankful or sorry for this.)

*

Two days, after that, with no food. No questioning, either, which was a pleasant change and almost made up for the gnawing in his stomach. Hux supposed they were trying to figure out what to do with him: if physical torture, and the strongest venom in the galaxy, and now the Force, all couldn’t make him speak — what next?

He got his answer sometime on the third day (at least he thinks it was the third day; one can never be sure of the passage of time in prison) — and that answer was Ren, again.

Hux had been sleeping, lightly and uncomfortably, as usual, when they came for him, his cell door creaking violently open and making him jerk awake. There’d been two of them, a man and a woman, and they’d each taken one of his arms and marched him to the interrogation room before he’d even fully realised what was going on. Strapped back into the torture chair, his wrists beginning to bleed as if on cue, his stomach growled loudly in the eerie empty room.

He’d waited, alone, for some moments. Then — the door thrown open, a shaft of harsh fluorescent light from the corridor — a dark shape silhouetted, and then dimness again. Hux’s eyes strained and recognised him at once.

“Lord Ren,” he’d said — the first time he’d spoken in days.

Ren had stepped closer to Hux, his eyes dark and cautious. He’d swallowed hard, saying nothing for a long moment, and then —

“Were you responsible for the destruction of the Hosnian and Ileenium systems?” His voice was hardly audible.

Hux gave an exaggerated sigh — “Back to this again?” — and then as soon as he finished speaking, Ren closed his eyes and lifted a hand.

“Do you feel remorse for your actions?” Ren’s voice flat, his fingers trembling.

Hux didn’t feel it right away, but soon: there. The warmth, the gentle intrusion of the Force into his mind; he remembered this, from _before,_ from the few times he’d opened himself completely to Ren and his powers.

“I see. _I_ see,” Hux said sardonically, struggling to resist. “They’re really pulling out all the stops for me, aren’t they?”

The warmth grew stronger, a haze filling Hux’s head. He’d closed his mind as best he could, fought against the calming pull of the Force: a crooning voice, not quite Ren’s, coaxing him, _Tell me, tell me…_ Hux thought back fiercely, _No, no, no, I am stronger than this, I am stronger than this,_ and the harder he thought it the more true it became. Ren’s forehead creased, his eyes squeezed furiously shut as he tried to break through the barriers in Hux’s head — and then all at once he gave up.

The warmth disappeared as quickly as it’d come, leaving an unexpected emptiness in its place as if, instead of an intruder, part of Hux had been removed. Hux had gasped, looking Ren, bewildered, in the eyes.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Hux had challenged him once he’d regained his voice. “Not going to try any harder than that?”

Ren stared at him, his chest rising and falling too quickly, and then finally spoke — “It would do you good to cooperate” — the words tumbling out in a mumble, a rush, barely comprehensible at all.

But Hux heard, and he understood. He frowned.

“Why should I cooperate _now,_ Ren? When I’ve been so _good_ for all this time?” he retorted loudly, glancing at the security camera trained permanently on the two of them and hoping whoever was watching the feed could hear his every word. “Don’t think I’ll start to behave just because — well, because it’s _you.”_ A smile had twisted its way across his lips, a cruel parody of something, of countless midnights and Ren’s fingers on his skin. “I’m not so easily swayed as that.”

Ren’s eyes locked onto his, dark and terrible and sad. Pleading with him: _Don’t be a fool, Hux, I’m trying to help you —_ this, now, Ren’s voice in his head, familiar as a ghost: the sound of it like a physical shock. Hux’s lip curled, his fists clenched in the manacles; blood dripped down his wrists.

“I don’t want your help, _Ben,”_ Hux spat. “I don’t take _pity_ from traitors.”

 _Clang._ The door shutting again behind Kylo Ren; Hux left alone and stupefied.

Too late, the realisation: _That may have been my last chance._

*

But it wasn’t. Why they persisted with questioning is still a mystery to Hux — and always the same two questions over and over, for they’d gotten all the other information they needed from the other First Order prisoners, presumably all dead or brainwashed now, and it was just Hux’s confession they lacked. However, he has had rather a lot of time to think it over, and the reasoning he’s come up with is that they want a confession from his lips directly — rather than making deductions from the evidence of others — so that they can kill him without getting his blood on their hands. If he confesses, the conscience of the Resistance remains unbesmirched: they have done the good thing, the lawful thing; whereas if they kill him without hearing him own up, there is always the possibility — however slim — that he was innocent after all. And the merciful Resistance will not take that chance.

They brought Ren — or Ben — to him again, some days later.

This time, Hux had a plan.   

This plan was based on the assumption that they would in fact make use of Ren and his powers again. Hux breathed a sigh of something like relief when it was indeed Ren’s dark form admitted to the torture chamber where he waited, enchained.

Ren —  _Ben —_ looked awful. His long hair was dishevelled, and the dark circles under his eyes — so familiar from their days on Starkiller, but seemingly absent since his defection, at least from what Hux had seen of him — had reappeared. His face was drawn, he looked weary, nervous; he seemed to lack the energy to hold himself up to his full height, much less that required to exert his powers and extract the information his mother so desperately required.

“Ren,” Hux greeted him coolly, imagining for a moment that they were back on Starkiller and that he’d called Ren to him for a reprimand after another of his infernal tantrums — or, in the later days, for some other purpose. “Lovely to see you again.”

Ren murmured something; Hux didn’t hear.

“What was that?” he asked sweetly, fixing an icy stare on Ren’s bowed dark head.

Ren lifted his head, his eyes met Hux’s: “I said that’s not my name.”

When their eyes met Hux felt the warmth at once, the slow beginning coils of Force energy pervading his conscious mind. Hux smirked — unbeknownst to Ren, he was doing exactly what Hux wanted him to. _Old habits._

“Not your name?” Hux repeated, not bothering to resist Ren’s further intrusion with the Force: allowing it, encouraging it, even. “Yes, that’s right, you call yourself _Ben_ now — the name you had as a child, if I’m not mistaken,” he continued, drawing, cruelly, on the things Ren had confided in him in the dead of night, in a hospital bed. “You call yourself that because you want to pretend you aren’t responsible,” Hux observed. The warmth inside his head flared hotter. “You want to pretend it wasn’t you — that none of it was real.” He smiled, almost gently. “But Ren, you forget: I know you better than that.”

Ren stared at Hux for a dumbfounded moment; and then he shut his eyes with a sharp intake of breath as slowly, one by one, Hux called up his memories of the two of them: memories of Ren.

The first thing he could find: Starkiller Base, in the early days. Hux’s quarters late at night, Ren’s fingers impatient and clumsy on Hux’s belt and trousers, and Hux’s voice a soft reprimand: “Greedy tonight, are we, Ren?”

(In the real world Ren flinched. Hux tried harder.)

Another night, Ren’s rooms this time: they’d come to blows after a fit of Ren’s, Hux’s fist connecting neatly and thoughtlessly with Ren’s cheekbone. The shock in his dark eyes, and then the hungry shift, and the way he’d fought back — Hux’s calculated swings matching Ren’s senseless lunges and punches, a passionate whirl like a dance. The two of them ending bloody and bruised, Hux panting, Ren’s hair in disarray and his pupils blown wide; and then Hux finally giving in, kissing Ren fiercely and tasting blood in his mouth, “That’s _enough,_ Ren,” and Ren moaning his name and letting himself, so willingly, be taken —

(There in the torture chamber, the real Ren staggered back, eyes fluttering madly closed as if that could block out the images inside his head. Hux smirked.)

Now the medbay on the shuttle that was supposed to take them to Snoke, just hours before its interception by the Resistance: Ren lying still in an anonymous bed, Hux keeping fervent vigil at his side. Days, days — Ren unconscious, unable to be submerged in a bacta tank until the coma broke and so merely _lying_ there, his bandages growing bloodier by the hour until Hux, unable to stand it, called impatiently for a nurse or a med-droid. Nightmare days: no sleep, no food — not unlike these days in prison, now Hux thinks of it; but then at least Ren was _Ren._

And then after so many, too many, of these days: a flutter of eyelids, the barest movement of a wrist, of fingers: Hux snapping to attention, hovering over Ren’s form on the bed. Dark eyes opening, miraculously untouched by the girl’s lightsaber strike — and then a voice Hux had barely hoped to ever hear again: “Hux?”

His relief unable to be contained, a desperate smile spreading across his face, and his hand finding Ren’s and squeezing. “Ren.”

It was this, after all of it, that seemed to break him, there in the interrogation room. Pain flashed across Kylo Ren’s face; it crumpled, and he stumbled back, withdrawing the Force from Hux’s head. _And we didn’t even make it to questioning,_ Hux thought, satisfied despite his now complete lack of energy, having exerted all his strength on conjuring up and making vivid the memories. They stayed there, both breathing hard, Ren standing shakily and Hux slumping wearily against his restraints.

“Not your name,” Hux said in the silence, shattering it. “But you remember.”

“Of _course_ I remember.”

Ren’s words were a growl, a savage fearful thing, and then at once he raised a hand to the security camera in the corner. The lens shattered and the blinking green light went dark. Before Hux could register what Ren had done, he stalked over to the chair and grasped Hux’s shoulders fiercely, pulling him as close as the bonds would allow. He kissed him, frightening, merciless, hard — Hux gasped against his mouth and succumbed.

The kiss was long, not long enough. Footsteps in the corridor outside, a knock at the door. “Master Solo, is everything all right?”

With a last furious kiss Ren pulled away from Hux. Hux closed his eyes, chest rising and falling too fast.

Ren stalked to the door, eyes ablaze, as the sound of a code being entered on a keypad was heard on the other side. “Everything is _fine,_ ” Ren growled, but it was too late; two concerned Resistance members entered the room, looking wary.

“The security camera in this room suddenly blacked out,” the young woman explained, casting a suspicious glance at Hux, who looked innocently back at her.

“We wanted to make sure the prisoner hadn’t somehow harmed you,” her older male counterpart added, shooting his own glare at Hux before turning questioning eyes on Ren —  _Ben,_ now. “Are you all right, Master Solo?”

“I’m fine,” Ben answered, his voice low and rough. His fists were clenched at his sides, he looked every inch a live wire; Hux recognised this look as immediately preceding Ren’s trademark tantrums, and hoped for the two officers’ sake that he had finally learned to restrain himself.

“Glad to hear it, Master Solo,” said the male officer calmly. Hux knew that tone of patronisation, knew too the true apprehension behind it. “Will you be continuing your interrogation?”

Ben cast a brief glance at Hux. Something flickered in his eyes: he seemed to come to a decision, and swallowed hard. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Are you sure?” interjected the woman. She’d been eyeing Hux with distrust all this time, as if _he_ were the feral dog suddenly unchained; and frowned in disagreement when Ben said shortly “Yes.”

The woman exchanged a look with her partner, seeming to want to interject, but the man shook his head briefly. Hux imagined the nonverbal response translated to something like, _He’s General Organa’s son, he can do what he likes._

The woman was clearly still not satisfied. Her eyes moved from Ben to Hux and back again before finally she said, “All right. Well, in that case — Master Solo, perhaps you’d like to come with us? If you have no more business here?”

Ben didn’t move. His fists uncurled and curled up at his sides.

“Master Solo?” the woman repeated.

“Yes. All right,” he expelled finally. The male officer went to the door and unlocked it with the keypad, holding it open for the woman and a reluctant Ben. As he crossed the threshold Ben darted a quick glance back over his shoulder at Hux. His eyes were unreadable.

The door clanged firmly shut behind them; the electronic locks whirled busily and confined Hux again. Once they’d gone he’d closed his eyes, still reeling. He tried to debrief, as he would with any other objective completed, but found he didn’t even know where to begin. _Was it a success?_ Hux didn’t know. He’d hoped to break Ben, find Ren still underneath, and he’d certainly done so — done more than that, in fact, thanks to Ren himself. _But where does that leave us?_

_How much further can I take him?_

*

All this was several days ago. Hux hasn’t seen Ren since. (He thinks of him — dreams of him — often enough, where he hadn’t before: almost as if seeing him, _touching_ him, had given him permission.)

And now here he is being brought to trial, and wondering what it was that finally made up General Organa’s mind. Did she find out what had happened — that, horror of horrors, her prize prisoner had _taken advantage_ of her only son?

Hux imagines, with a strange feeling of revulsion, Ben Solo running to his mother, confessing everything to her. Their liaison, beginning aboard the _Finalizer_ when Ren was first sent to the Order, and lasting far longer than either of them had intended. Hux’s insistence on staying with Ren after his injuries on Starkiller, the indication of a devotion neither he nor Ren could have predicted. And now this, his abuse of Ben’s powers, using him as a means to Hux’s own ends. Hux wonders how much Leia Organa knows, and what she’ll have in store for him because of it.

The orderly finishes cutting Hux’s hair. “Done,” she says roughly, and nudges him out of the chair. She jerks her chin to the medbay doors, where two blank-faced officers stand waiting. “Go with them.”

“Thank you,” Hux says, and receives an unimpressed glare in return. “You did a very good job.”

_“Quiet.”_

Hux smiles at her and goes as directed to the officers at the doors. His smile fades slowly from his face as he approaches them: he swallows. The two men each take one of his arms and frog-march him down the corridor. He’s taken through the back halls of the base —  _so as not to be a spectacle, I suppose —_ and finally he and his jailors arrive at the double doors of what must be the courtroom. Hux closes his eyes for a moment. If he were any other man this is where he’d start to pray.

The doors are thrown open. Light, bright light: Hux squints and stumbles as the guards drag him along. He hears murmuring, growing louder as he is taken up a set of stairs. His eyes adjust, and he looks around him, takes everything in.

The jury box is full. So is the audience. Once again Hux doesn’t know whether he should be insulted or honoured. More than anything, he’s surprised that this many people have been allowed to watch.

He’s shoved into a seat in the defendant’s chair. His guards — armed, he realises now — take their places behind him, as if there’s any chance he’d try and run with this many people watching. He can feel the eyes of the entire audience, the judge and all the jury, boring into him; Hux stares defiantly back, not caring that it’s probably in his best interest to be humble.

He looks around. _Not long now._ Only a few places remain unfilled; the Resistance agent acting as prosecutor slides into his assigned seat in the opposite box. The front row of the audience is empty, presumably reserved — Hux thinks he knows for whom; and just as the thought crosses his mind, another set of doors swing open.

General Leia Organa enters the courtroom at the head of a posse of assistants and attendants, looking regal and severe dressed head-to-toe in black, her grey-brown hair elaborately arranged. Her head is held high and there is a fierce glint in her eyes.

She has lived through this before. Her home planet was obliterated as she, a prisoner, watched, helpless and unable to stop it — but this time, she is in control. Leia Organa is the most powerful being in the galaxy, now that the Order has been dismantled, and Hux knows she will stop at nothing to find the justice she thinks she deserves. He is the last thing that stands in her way, and she has come to destroy him.

And she’s not alone.

Following a few steps behind her is her son.

Kylo Ren is led into the courtroom and up to the empty witness box.

Murmurs swell. There are no armed guards for him, of course. Ben Solo is the pride of the Resistance, the proof of their power, their rightness: he left the dark side to join their cause; he abandoned his past in favour of their future. He has his mother’s blood and his father’s courage and he is now, the audience knows, about to deliver the evidence that will convict General Hux and lay a final wreath of laurels on the Resistance’s head. He is a saviour. _He is a traitor._

The judge calls for order. The trial begins. Hux barely listens: instead he watches Ren. The former knight’s head is bowed; he stares at the floor with his hair hanging around his face, and Hux wonders if he’s praying, or merely listening as Hux’s crimes are spelled out —  _mass murder, genocide, unforgivable breach of the Galactic Concordance._ Hux is certain Ren knows that everyone in the room is genteelly ignoring (forgetting) Ren’s own place in these awful events.

Ren looks up for the briefest of seconds as the lawyer drones on. His dark eyes make a nervous circuit of the room, meet Hux’s for a moment: Hux stares back, and Ren looks quickly away.

“Ben Solo.”

Ren stands.

His shoulders are hunched, his posture slouching, as if he’s trying not to be seen. He shuffles reluctantly up to the podium, his eyes wary and shadowed.

“Did you witness the destruction of the Hosnian and Ileenium systems?”

“Yes.” Ren’s voice is barely audible, the prosecutor straining to hear.

“Can you confirm that the weapon aboard the so-called Starkiller Base was responsible?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“And that this man, General Brendol Hux II of the First Order, was in turn responsible for the construction and use of this weapon?”

Ren mumbles something that neither Hux nor the prosecutor can hear.

“Repeat yourself, please.”

Ren straightens up and speaks louder. “He acted under orders from Supreme Leader Snoke.”

Murmurs, again, louder now. The judge bangs his gavel.

“Supreme Leader Snoke, as you call him, is dead,” the prosecutor tells Ren flatly. “General Hux was the First Order’s second-in-command. Whether under orders or not, _was he responsible_ for the firing of the Starkiller weapon on the Ileenium and Hosnian systems, Master Solo?”

Ren hesitates. “Yes.”

“You witnessed him give the order to fire the weapon, did you not?”

Ren shakes his head. “No, sir. I was aboard the Star Destroyer _Finalizer_ at the time of the weapon’s firing.”

The prosecutor waves a dismissive hand. “We have enough other eyewitness reports to confirm that it was, in fact, this man who gave the command,” he says, gesturing to Hux.  He continues undeterred:

“Did you, Master Solo, during your time under General Hux’s command, or any time afterward, receive any indication of remorse from him? Any sense of regret for the terrible crimes he committed?”

Ren wavers. His eyes flick to Hux. Hux swears he can hear him —  _Help me. Let me help you._

This: this is the moment Hux has been waiting for. This is the reason he’s manipulated Ren, tricked him and seduced him a second time over — all he has to do is nod, and Ren will lie for him. Ren will say _yes_ and then he’ll weave a perfect tale: Hux torn apart by guilt and sobbing on Ren’s shoulder, Hux renouncing his career and his orders and his glory. Hux begging for the forgiveness of gods he is not sure have ever listened.

If Hux nods, Ren will save his life.

Ren pleads wordlessly: _Let me, Hux. Let me do this for you._

Hux nods minutely, and gives him permission.

Ren looks at him with something like relief in his eyes. He squares his shoulders back. “Yes,” he says, his voice louder, clearer now. “Yes. General Hux expressed to me —”

“In private?” the prosecutor interjects baldly. Hux’s jaw tightens.

Ren’s gaze flicks around, uneasy. “I — I don’t see how that’s relevant,” he says, as coolly as he can; but he’s been shaken. He tries again. “General Hux…expressed to me, on numerous occasions, his feelings of regret for his actions. During my recovery aboard Supreme Leader Snoke’s shuttle, for example, and —”

“Thank you, Master Solo. That will be all.”

Ren blinks. He stammers, taken aback: “That’s it?”

“Yes,” the prosecutor says carelessly. “Thank you. You may be seated.”

Ren stumbles back to his seat in a daze. Hux closes his eyes; his chest feels hollow _. It didn’t work._

“Brendol Hux II, you are called to the stand,” the judge announces.

Hux opens his eyes. He stands and makes his way to the podium, keeping his head held high. He feels Ren’s despairing gaze on him as the familiar interrogation begins.

“Are you responsible for the destruction of the Ileenium and Hosnian systems?”

“Yes.”

“Do you feel remorse for your actions?”

 _Yes. Yes. Yes._ The word pulsing like a heartbeat in his head: this is his chance. His last chance, his only chance to save himself, since Ren is their puppet now, his defence worthless and falling on deaf ears.

_But would it even make a difference?_

He has been slated for extermination from the very beginning. Even here, separated from what remains of the Order (if, indeed, anything does), for months, tortured and beaten and abused for his crimes, they consider him a threat. Even if he confesses — gets on his knees and weeps for them, rents his clothes and pulls his hair, kisses Leia Organa’s hands and begs for her forgiveness — they cannot afford to let him live. He knows this. He has always known this. He has always known that his efforts have all been in vain.

But: _I saw Ren again. I touched him again. So — perhaps — it was not all for nothing._

All the same, it doesn’t matter anymore. He has been a dead man for months.

Hux looks the prosecutor straight in the eye. Calmly, he says, “No.”

Ren lets out a ragged breath. Hux’s eyes meet his: _Hux,_ he sees there. _Do you know what you’ve done?_

_Yes, Ren. Of course I do._

“That will be all,” the prosecutor announces. Hux bows his head.

The judge nods to the jury. They leave, convene for only a moment, and return.

The verdict has been decided from the start. The word “Guilty” surprises no one when it falls heavy on their ears; and so why does Ben Solo stand and cry out, a wretched and terrible look in his eye, one hand grasping at the air like a drowning man reaching for shore?

The judge speaks in a monotone, eyes fixed firmly on the back wall of the courtroom. “Brendol Hux II is hereby sentenced to death by lethal injection or firing squad, at Her Highness General Leia Organa’s pleasure.”

Hux doesn’t hear the general’s response. He watches, numb, his ears filled with a dull white roaring, as her son collapses at her side, a strangled cry escaping his throat —  _“No!”_

Ren is surrounded in a moment by a concerned crowd; he disappears from Hux’s view as he himself is wrenched roughly from the stand and marched out of the court and back to his cell.

As he leaves he hears Ren crying his name over and over, in the voice of a broken man.

*

They don’t say when they’ll come for him.

This is standard practice, of course — prisoners of the First Order were also not told when they were going to die — but somehow Hux had thought that this particular form of torture — the endless waiting, the constant fear, each day wondering, _will today be my last? —_  would have been a step too far for the Resistance’s morals to handle.

_Apparently not._

By the third day after the trial Hux’s nerves are so raw that it gives him a strange sort of bravery. He’s not been sleeping well, for obvious reasons, and in his perpetual tortured twilight state he’s half-dreamed up a plan.

This plan, like the last, requires Ren.

Early in the third day, when his morning meal is brought, Hux jumps up from his bed and says, urgently, “Wait!”

The orderly turns, thinly-veiled disgust on his face. “What do you want?”

“I would like to see Ben Solo,” Hux says as humbly as he can, Ren’s new (old) name foreign on his tongue. “Please.”

The orderly frowns. He doesn’t say anything for a long time.

“Please,” Hux repeats for good measure. Even he is not above begging, if he has to.

The orderly seems to come out of his trance. He grunts and turns to go, shaking his head. The door clangs shut behind him and Hux sinks back onto the metal bed. He closes his eyes.

He must fall asleep, because he awakes some time later to the sound of the door opening again. A shaft of light falls into the room. Hux straightens up, dazed, expecting another orderly come to collect his untouched plate from earlier — but a tall looming figure darkens the doorway and a voice says his name, “Hux,” low and raw, and Hux struggles to standing.

“Ren.”

Ren steps past the threshold. The door swings shut behind him and they are left in dimness.

“You asked for me.”

“You came.”

Ren nods. “They let me.” He takes a hesitant step closer to Hux, unsure of where he stands. “Why did you —”

Hux interrupts him. “I want you to help me, Ren.”

Ren’s lips part in confusion. “Help you how?”

“Sit down.”

Ren obliges, wincing at the hardness of the metal slab. Hux sits down next to him and looks him in the eye.

“I don’t want to die on their terms,” he states plainly.

Ren’s eyebrows draw together. “What?”

“Ren. Please. Listen to me.” Hux takes a breath, his eyes still fixed on Ren’s. “I want you to do it.”

“Hux — do _what?”_ Ren demands, frowning deeper. “You don’t mean —”

“I do.”

Ren’s eyes widen in horrified disbelief. “Hux, that’s _absurd —_ that’s insane — I’m not an executioner, for hells’ sake — they’ll never let me do it, not in front of everyone — my mother —!”

“I know.” Hux cuts him off. Ren stares at the door of the cell, his body seeming to tremble. “Ren. Look at me.”

Slowly, Ren does. Hux lays a hand on his arm. Ren shudders.

“I want you to do it in private. Before they get to me. Please, Ren.” Hux smiles without humour. “A dying man’s final request. Let me have this one last thing from you.”

Ren’s eyes have grown wet. His voice is hollow when he speaks: “You can’t mean this. You can’t want this.”

“Listen to me, Ren.” Hux moves his hand from Ren’s arm, places it on his face and rubs his thumb over the cheekbone, damp with tears. “Let me keep my dignity.” He kisses him, slowly, gently. “Please,” he murmurs, as a sob tears from Ren’s throat. _“Please.”_

He kisses him again. Ren moans, agonised, and sinks into the kiss, his desperate hands coming up to fist in Hux’s shirt, clutch at his hair. Hux draws him closer, thinks _please, Ren, please,_ over and over and over. Ren’s tears are warm on his lips.

Finally Hux pulls back, rests his forehead against Ren’s. He searches his eyes, knowing already what he’ll find.

Shaking, desperate, Ren nods.

“Thank you.” Hux’s fingers trail lightly down Ren’s cheek.

Ren looks at him in utter misery. “When?” he whispers.

“They won’t tell me the day of the execution,” Hux tells him. Ren flinches at the last word. “So it might be best to do it — soon,” Hux says gently. “Now. If you think you can.” Ren closes his eyes in despair, and Hux kisses him again. “I’m sorry to ask this of you,” he whispers. “But can you? Will you?”

Ren hesitates.

“It will be easy,” Hux murmurs, stroking Ren’s hair. “I won’t put up a fight. There won’t be any blood.”

Still Ren does nothing, says nothing.

“Kylo. Please.”

And now at last Ren lifts a shaking hand.

Hux feels the slow reluctant press of Force energy on his skin: a gentle vise around his neck. Ren is trembling; he won’t look Hux in the eye.

“Kylo,” Hux murmurs, his breathing already slightly strained. “Don’t use your powers. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Ren’s eyes flash to him, wounded _–—don’t you know you’re hurting me?_

“Use your hands. I know you’re able.” Hux looks into his eyes. “I want your touch to be the last thing I feel.”

The coil of Force energy unwinds itself. Hux breathes. Gently, he finds Ren’s hands and lifts them to his throat.

Tears stream down Ren’s cheeks. Hux smiles at him — “Go on,” he whispers. “For me.”

Ren’s grip tightens, slowly, slowly. He is crying openly now, his shoulders shaking. Hux’s vision begins to blur.  

“Thank you,” he whispers with the last of his breath. “Thank you.”

*

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [firstorder-pixie](http://firstorder-pixie.tumblr.com) and [coeurd-art-ichaut](http://coeurd-art-ichaut.tumblr.com) for the art, to be found [here](http://firstorder-pixie.tumblr.com/post/154893019599/my-secret-santa-gift-for-abernathae-she-wanted) and [here](http://coeurd-art-ichaut.tumblr.com/post/161326011343/please-kylo-inspired-by-fondu-au-noir-by)!
> 
> Come say hi on my [main blog](http://abernathae.tumblr.com) or my [Star Wars blog](http://huxes.tumblr.com) :)


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